Institutions, community and public land
Understandably, the foremost impact of urbanisation in the country can be mapped on the corresponding transformation of land-use. It is critical to know how we are dealing with metamorphosis of the urban space in general but it is way more important to monitor how management of the urban and regional public land is being carried out. Because it is a territory, actual and perceived, where (mainly) the government meets public aspirations and literally builds its performance (and for that matter legitimacy) in terms of creating public amenities like parks, hospitals, schools and housing stock etc.
Just to put things in perspective, roughly, there are two noticeable categories of spatial expression of Pakistani urbanisation; the concentration model of Sindhi cities – where 49% of the population is concentrated in three cities, Karachi, Hyderabad and Sukkar. The second is the cluster pattern of Punjab. The province hosts most of the country’s urban clusters; Lahore, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Rawalpindi, Sargodha and Multan. These clusters consist of numerous small to medium sized cities at a distance of 30-45 minutes with population density of 1000-5000/sq.km gradually growing to the core to be 10000-15000 and above per sq.km. The infrastructure development of CPEC will form new patterns of settlements in Gilgit-Baltistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. Keeping in the view the existing and emerging demographic challenges, the responsibility of the government and the community, therefore, increases many folds in handling the affairs of public land pool of thousands of acres locked within our cities and regions in terms of how we tap this great resource to boost socio-economic development.
The state of affairs is known to us but reiteration would be a good reminder; state land is massively encroached or recklessly utilised, its record is poorly maintained, revenue collection on its usage is not up to the mark, government functionaries are least bothered about this precious public asset, public-private transactions are costly and opaque, there are multiple agencies with overlapping instructions, organizational culture is ancient, there are thousands of court cases pending adjudication, the government has always been unfair with the tenants of state land etcetera.
Certainly, there are things that can be understood as genuinely complicated problems of institutional succession, jurisdiction, perspective, power or participation on land policy and administration etc. but nonetheless provide an excuse for apathy towards reforms.
Take for instance the issue of creating new land titles on public land, successive governments in the center and the provinces could not deliver on this issue despite their pre-election slogans and claims. They didn’t have the capacity to carry out what they promised or they simply failed to understand that giving propriety rights to the landless farmers or the eligible lessees of state land (who have sincerely made efforts to make their tenancies cultivable) contributes overall to the national economy. The land titles bring sense of ownership to further improve the quality and productivity of land among other things. Similarly, by regularization of slums through granting land rights to the slum dwellers is the same tool that significantly helps alleviate poverty and improve living conditions. If there is no concrete effort to have even the low hanging fruits (requiring only efficient management), one wonders as to how the status quo in this domain favours our political class.
Even if socio-economic development of the poor through optimum use of public land is absent or remains at the bottom of priority menu of the political elite, the government has to carefully review the existing state of affairs of public land administration for the sake of its development mantra. In that way, things have to change in the light of new interactions with foreign stakeholders in urban infrastructure development as every new venture (otherwise demanding efficient response) exposes public institutions and their capacity badly. Similarly, the new mode of public-private-partnership in urban development – where the government has committed to provide public land as its share among other things – requires intense housekeeping by the government for building trust with the private partners.
While the government has to see the entire institutional framework to remove barriers for the state land to really become an asset for the economy and society, the community has to push the government to come out to deliver. It has to work with the institutions to chalk out simple modalities on how (especially) the lower stratum can reap benefits from the land policy. It has to identify genuine candidates for land grants and eliminate the corrupt elements from their rows and most importantly, the community has to provide alternative mechanism for dispute resolution.
